This invention relates to confectioneries in general, and particularly to lollipops, combining two or more individual edible parts each molded on a holding stick like lollipop confectioneries, but especially configured to be assembled stacking together one above the other, in order to integrate one multiple lollipop, with a plurality of shapes, colors and flavors, which allows the user to manually rotate each of the stacked components independently.
Due to its advantages and popularity, many different inventions and innovations have been developed regarding this type of confectionery.
The lollipop consumption has been growing year after year, and at the same time, their fields of use have been diversified, including pharmaceutical products and other edible confectioneries and toys.
Despite the numerous innovations and devices related to lollipops that have been created, one characteristic has remained unchanged in all of them: the tight attachment of a candy or edible part at one end of a usually disposable holding stick.
Therefore, users have enjoyed sucking, licking or biting the candy or edible part rigidly attached to a stick. That arrangement provides several advantages as, for example, when the user wants to speak or drink some beverage, he/she may easily take out the candy or edible part from his/her mouth and hold it safely and hygienically in the meantime; that can be done with no need to touch the candy or edible part directly with his/her hands, but with the limitations imposed by its rigid connection to a holding element and usually comprising only one candy or edible part.
Consequently, many patents have been issued for improvements and novelties, and a great variety of designs has been introduced in the field of lollipops, regarding their shapes, sizes, color, flavor and combinations of colors and flavors, including a large number of lollipop holders with multiple supplementary features and diverse complexity.
However, according to our search, most patents have been always related to single lollipops with one candy or edible part in a fixed position and a solid holding stick or stem, while just a few of them have been provided with hollow or tubular holding sticks like those used in the present invention.
Certainly, when the user is sucking a simple conventional lollipop, if the holding stick is tubular like a drinking straw, the suction action of the candy or edible part can be negatively affected by the air that can enter through the hollow core of the holding stick, but that can be overcome closing the top of the stick with the tongue while sucking or slightly tilting the lollipop and closing the open end with the lips.
In the present invention, in addition, said inconvenience mentioned above is mostly minimized by the presence of the solid stick of the uppermost stacked candy or edible part.
For massive highly automatic production the use of tubular holding sticks can require some changes to the manufacturing process currently used, where the holding sticks are inserted into the candies or edible parts after they are molded while their mass is still hot and semi fluid.
There are dozens of thousands of commercially available novelties in this field, including all kind of combinations of shapes, sizes, flavors and colors and hundreds of holders, dispensers and containers, many of them with interesting amusing features including light, sound and motion.
Thereof many prior patented inventions related to relatively complex holding devices, that impart rotation and other motions to individual conventional lollipops, as well as provide them with sound, illumination effects and other amusing features, but there are no prior inventions related to confectioneries in general and lollipops in particular that provide the combination of two or more individual components allowing each or them to be manually rotated by the user independently without the use of additional holders which are reusable, and relative complex and expensive.
Among the U.S. invention patents and designs cited for reference in its entirety there are some holding devices directly related to rotate or impart rotation to individual conventional lollipops; others incorporating two or more flavored edible parts and still others incorporating tubular holding sticks for other purposes, like combining a lollipop with a drinking straw.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,565,899 B1 was granted to Cecere in May 2003 for a Combination Lollipop, Drinking Straw and Beverage Cap, which teaches a simple individual candy affixed around the upper portion of a tubular holding stick leaving exposed its open top.
Said prior art invention includes the use of a tubular drinking straw-like holding stick, with its top open end exposed on top of the edible part of a lollipop with the purpose of being used as a drinking straw, but that is its only similarity with the present invention.
The only prior art inventions that somehow teach lollipop rotation are not actually lollipops, but handles or holding devices to which conventional lollipops are attached and therefore are not directly related to the present invention whatsoever.
Among those devices the U.S. Pat. No. 8,951,588 B2 was issued in February 2015 to Block, with the title “Device and Method for Rotation of Confectionery”, consisting a reusable hand held device onto which are engaged candies or edible parts especially configured, provided with a centrally located and conveniently dimensioned hole, in a manner that allows said engaged confectioneries to spin freely, driven by the user directly with his/her tongue.
Said prior art invention refers to a holding device and is not really a novelty lollipop, and some differences in relation to the present invention are that: the holding component is a reusable and more complex device; the edible parts of the invention are especially manufactured and supplied as separate components and the spinning is driven only by the user's tongue or optionally by means of an electric motor or winding mechanism.
Among others, one important disadvantage in relation to the present invention is that the use of said prior art invention involves hygienic and health concerns, because being reusable, the holding device requires thorough and careful washing and storage and to use it, it is necessary to use the hands to handle the candies of edible parts in order to assemble them onto the holding device.
Other relative disadvantage of said prior art invention is that it can comprise several small separate non-edible elements that might accidentally get loose, involving the risk of unsafe use by little children.
A limitation of said prior art invention is that the shape of the confectioneries has to be substantially planar due to practical requirements regarding its assembling and performance.
Another prior art found that refers to a device for the manual rotation of a lollipop was published with the reference number 2004/0156955 A1, filed on February 2003 by Klima, with the title “Candy Sucker”.
Said prior art publication is not really a candy sucker as its title suggests, it is actually a device as mentioned in its claims, very simple though, comprising a case with a tubular handle to store the edible part of one lollipop, and providing a holding stick with a little knob to impart rotation manually to the lollipop that is inserted onto the top of the device.
Although its rotation feature is similar to the manual rotation of the present invention, it is not a confectionery or combination of confectioneries, but as said above: a non-edible mechanical device.
One limitation of said mechanical device is that it only works with one lollipop. Furthermore, when reused, it also has the hygienic problems associated with that condition regarding its washing and storage care.
Commercially available there is a plastic holder provided with gears and a tiny handle with which the user can impart rotation to a lollipop inserted on its top, the Creamy Krank Lollipop distributed by “The Nutty Fruit House”.
Said novelty is not just a confectionery, but like in the previous cases, it is a reusable non-edible holding device that works with one simple lollipop and as such has the corresponding hygienic disadvantages mentioned above, being in addition relatively complex and expensive in comparison with the present invention.
Furthermore, a common relative disadvantage inherent to all lollipop holding devices is that their production involves manufacturing processes that are substantially different to those used for confectioneries in general and lollipops in particular, creating additional unnecessary complications, while the present novelty invention only requires the usual manufacturing processes typical of the confectionery manufacturing industry.
According to our search, so far no invention or design has been submitted claiming the specific features of the Multiple Stacked Rotatable Lollipop object of the present invention, directly related to confectioneries and not including reusable holding devices.
The novelty of the present invention should be understood as being distinguished from those prior art references and such incorporation by reference is only provided for enabling support of the numerous ways in which this particular product can be manufactured.